Prospero of Prospero’s Island – thank you for digging up an interview with the mention of Kindle First!

I did some research myself – and it all seemed to point to Kindle First. For example, all 1,200+ reviews have been posted during November, in line with Kindle First offering the book a month before its release on 1 December. For those not familiar with Kindle First – it is an offer of free or discounted bestsellers (I think just four of them a month), chosen by Amazon’s editors. I have searched madly for any clues on how to get on the list, but it seems to be either a secret or an impossible feat, even though most traditional publishers are currently not supporting it.

Funny you should mention Kindle First. I was browsing a book and below it was an advertisement for Kindle First. It was below the book description. I was intrigued and decided to take a look after I purchased my book. After I bought my book, I went back and the note was gone. There was a different note for Amazon Prime to sign up. I tried looking for it through a search and nothing. 😞 The advert changed again to something else.

No wonder I didn’t know about Book Gorilla–I haven’t bought a book in about fifteen years (this is what you get for living on an island with nothing but the bare necessities–hell, we just got the internet a few weeks ago).

My name is Matthew. I’m the author of The Short Drop. Saw this thread, and the confusion regarding the quantity of reviews for my book. Thought I’d shed some light on the issue if that’s okay.

So… Thomas & Mercer is Amazon Publishing’s thriller imprint. Amazon is a publisher in its own right, in addition to being a bookseller. It has multiple imprints for various genres. For example, it’s Romance Imprint is called Montlake Romance.

In February, Thomas & Mercer bought the rights to my book and selected it for the Kindle First program. Kindle First is one of the benefits to having an Amazon Prime membership. The way it works is that each month, Amazon offers six books to it’s Prime members before their official publication date. As a Prime member, you can choose to download one of the six books for free. My month ends on Monday night and a fresh slate of titles will be offered.

On December 1, my books will actually be “published” and will be for sale to the general public.

I hope that helps to clarify things. I’ve included links below to the various pieces that I cited.

Thank you, Matthew! Congratulations on your success – may I ask what has been your journey to get to the point of getting Thomas and Mercer interested? Was it a long hard road or an “overnight success”?

Appreciate it, Ana. To answer your question, it was the proverbial long hard road to an eventual overnight success. So.. both? I wrote a novel in my twenties that I poured myself into but which never sold. It was the 90s so pre-self-publishing. Burned out, I essentially gave up on writing and moved on to other career paths. If you’d told me five years ago that I would be a published author, I would have looked for the hidden camera. The desire to write began to reassert itself over the last few years, slowly at first, but out of that rekindled enthusiasm, I wrote The Short Drop.

Thank you again, Matthew! That gives hope to a lot of us – I myself burned out after a year and 70+ pitches. I have since self-published Shizzle, Inc and hope to catch attention of the big leagues with the sequels. Or continue myself – I’ve actually enjoyed publishing and marketing game 🙂

Thanks for joining the discussion, Matthew, very helpful of you. Almost everything’s clear now, but could I ask – how exactly did you go about submitting your book to Thomas & Mercer in the first place? It’s clearly a different route to straightforward self-publishing.

Good luck with the book – after all this interest I think I’m going to have to read it now!

Tim – The missing pieces here, I think, is that in addition to its self-publishing tools, Amazon is also a traditional publisher (Amazon Publishing) in the mold of the big 5. Last year, I had the good fortune to land an agent who submitted my book to a number of publishers. We took Thomas & Mercer’s offer. So there was no direct submission procedure.

Thanks Ana. I have actually used some of them, but I am not sure why there are not many sales from those sites either. Maybe, you can try Book Buzz, but it usually works better for nonfiction as what I heard from the affiliates there.

How do I join author groups too? I am having problems getting more reviews because when I send to some reviewers of similar dating books, many don’t respond. I usually tend to get some bloggers to provide feedback.

Hi, Titania – have you tried joining your local/state writing association? I found my group on meetup.com, actually. Btw, I got most of the reviews through social media and advertising, so it’s a numbers game – try to get the book into hands of as many readers as possible, for example by giving it away for free for a limited time?

Hmm nope never tried the meetup group yet. Will give it a shot. Well, advertising does not seem to evoke feedback. Did try free days before it did not work out. Think people are more attracted to freebies these days.

Great news about your sales, Ana. It’s possible to sign (as a reader if you’re a Prime costumer) to get a newsletter sent every month with their books on offer the month before they’re officially published. I’ve signed, although I have a very long list of books to read. Matthew’s reply was very useful. I know some Spanish authors whose books have done quite well in Spanish and Amazon has chosen them for translation and published them under one of their own publishing imprints, so I guess it’s possible to catch their eye. (Another one of the authors won the Amazon independent novel competition for books in Spanish this year and they’ll publish her novel in English too).

Hi Ana, congrats on your sales success…I just got an email from amazon.com, all departments Deals of the Day, and the first/lead deal was Shizzle Inc. Great exposure! Is this a random thing from Amazon or part of a marketing campaign?

Awesome site you have here but I was curious if you knew of any message boards that
cover the same topics discussed in this article?
I’d really love to be a part of group where I can get advice from
other experienced people that share the same interest.
If you have any recommendations, please let me know. Many thanks!

Hi, Tim – that’s because I had no idea they were gonna do that and just changed the price to $2.99. Can’t even change it back – will have to wait till the morning. Thanks again for letting me know – amazing 🙂